


Rooftop

by theproseofnight



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Emo smut, F/F, Light Angst, Modern AU, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-26 23:56:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18292754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theproseofnight/pseuds/theproseofnight
Summary: The rooftop used to be more than enough room for two. Now, it feels too small for even one. No more space than the tightness in Clarke's chest.





	1. Parts I & II

**Author's Note:**

> This mini fic came about from a dialogue writing prompt on Tumblr, where these first two parts were posted. The rest to be continued here on AO3. It started out light and fluffy (when the idea first formed in my head) but ended up being angsty and dramatic (couldn't help myself when I went to actually write it). It's short, and _sometimes_ sweet, but also something new I'm trying creatively: the entire story and every scene takes place in one setting, a rooftop. I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Cheers to the always fantastic [@femininenachos](https://femininenachos.tumblr.com) and [@mopeytropey](https://mopeytropey.tumblr.com) for being my extra set of eyes and all-around brilliant soundboards :)

***** 

**— PART I —**

 

It’s the cape.

“Why are you here, Lexa?”

“I had to come.”

“Oh, _now_ you finally show up?”

A long beat then a soft sigh before softer words reach her.

“I needed to see you.”

Clarke closes her eyes, breathes in deep, and turns her face, if ever so slightly to deny the request. She crosses her arms, and can’t help the sulk in her voice, “Well, you’ve seen me.”

She knows she’s being petulant but it hurts. Hearing her voice hurts. Having her a few feet away, but never so farther apart, hurts.

The rooftop used to be more than enough room for two. An open terrace of scattered chairs and tables, an eclectic mix of unloved furniture they’d cast aside for a makeshift dance floor under the glow of stringed lights and autumn’s coppered warmth. More than enough room for her feet to be carried in stumbling, laughing steps from the southeast corner to the northwest. For movie nights in huddled blankets and late afternoon brunches in hushed tones. Now, it feels too small for even one. No more space than the tightness in her chest.

“Clarke,” comes the fraught plea.

It’s reflexive. Clarke opens her eyes. But she doesn’t look because she knows with the way that familiar timbre breaks across the consonants of her name comes a green that is far more tender, gentle, than any colour has a right to be. Than _she_  has a right to be.

Instead, Clarke keeps her gaze down, at the glass and concrete and steel below, watches the flow of people and cars. The city thrums beneath her feet but all she can feel is the stutter of her heart, its broken beat.

“Please don’t sit so close to the edge.”

She childishly scoots closer. But in her haste to be difficult, indignant, the momentum causes her to slip. Suddenly, the brick ledge is replaced by solid, empty air. Her stomach swoops.

Before Clarke can panic that she’s falling from twenty storeys high, she’s wrapped up in strong arms and folded against a warm chest. The rush of wind and the flap of fabric compete with the pulsing in her ears.

Again, it’s reflexive. Clarke tucks her head into the curve of neck and shoulder and inhales the scent of forest and sea and sky, distances her intrepid rescuer can cover in one flight. It’s only been two weeks but she misses it like it’s been years.

They glide in silence for awhile as Lexa takes a detour through midtown, past skyscrapers and then around the bay before grazing over the treetop canopies of the park. Their trajectory, swift and graceful like swallows in formation skating along an undetermined path, draws the attention of curious onlookers, craning for a view and pointing up in elated gasps.

“People are staring,” Clarke protests though there is little fight behind her scolding.

“Let them,” Lexa whispers, her words nearly lost to the wind rustling through Clarke’s hair, only kept in place by a faint press of lips to the top of her head.

It confuses Clarke. What Lexa says and what she refuses to do.

When Clarke’s set back on her feet, returned to the same rooftop but a significant distance safely away from her earlier perch, she doesn’t offer thanks to her heroine. Tears fall without permission and she burrows deeper into the crook of where skin and fabric meet to hide them.

A whooshing sound and then she’s enveloped in rich, red velvet. Her breath hitches when an arm tightens around her waist, when a hand rubs soothing patterns the length of her back, her pulse racing before it steadies into a shared rhythm with its counterpart. They settle into unmeasured minutes of well-worn comfort as Clarke quietly sobs, not understanding how they ended up here. Together, but not.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why Lexa?”

“I just …” Lexa responds but hesitates with a pained reluctance to finish her sentence, “I can’t.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Clarke feels her anger resurfacing and pulls away, ready to reproach the persistent non-answer, only to find a wet gaze full of remorse and longing. Yet resolute.

She tries to read past the fatigue—the resignation—in the crinkling flicker of green and golden flecks, to trace the invisible lie that might hide beneath the disarming fullness of rose-coloured lips, the possibility of a changed mind and a return of reason. But, as has been for sleepless nights now in terse and tense standoffs over texts and voicemails, nothing but regret and resolve greet her.

They can’t keep doing this. Not anymore.

Clarke takes a heavy step back, wipes her cheek. On a shaky breath, she says, just as obstinately, and in matched degrees of regret and resolve, “Don’t come back here until you can. We’re done.”

It’s quiet save for the hum of the mechanical units. The words ring loudly before fading into the evening light.

Clarke watches, helpless and hopeless, as a tear falls on Lexa’s stricken face that tells her, she was wholly wrong before—there is enough room on this rooftop for _two_ hearts to break. Her wife gives a solemn nod and then, after one last crumbling look, as if memorising the sight of love, disappears into the dusty sky, a streak of red ablaze against blue and orange.

Clarke’s heart clenches at the sight.

She used to love that cape.

 

 

 *****

**— PART II —**

 

“You came back.”

“Sorry.” Red boots hurry to their feet. A book and a half-eaten banana fall to the ground. “You usually don’t come on Wednesday nights.”

“This isn’t a time-sharing vacation spot.”

“Sorry,” is mumbled again as Lexa scrambles to collect her things. “You can have it back.”

It’s been a full month. Clarke hasn’t seen or heard from her wife in thirty excruciatingly long days. She knows she asked for it, the distance, the space to make peace with whatever inexplicable fractures that are splintering them apart. But she didn’t think Lexa would last longer than a week. She didn’t think  _she_ could.

Clarke strains not to take back her hollow words, to yield to the aching silence that follows her nights and seeps into her mornings. She’s far from done with Lexa, far from ready to let go, in any capacity. But her pride is a force to be reckoned with, and in this moment, anger and bitterness are its happy companions.

“So, you haven’t changed your mind?” She more accuses than asks, failing to keep her sarcasm in check.

Now raised to her full height, Lexa shifts self-consciously on her weight, distracted from answering for a drawn out minute by smoothing out the nonexistent wrinkles of her cape. She gives a rueful head shake at last before Clarke is unsurprised to hear the whispered, _no_.

Clarke is tempted to offer a humourless laugh at the stalemate they’ve reached but merely manages a scoff instead. In a huff, she makes to leave, halfway to the steel door when the thought occurs to her.

“How do you know?” She asks, changing tact and softening in tone. There’s a good fifteen feet between them but she’s never had to speak above a decibel to be heard.

The question stops Lexa mid-takeoff, one knee caught uncomfortably half raised while an arm is extended high up in a closed fist, head turned at an unnatural angle to meet her wife’s eyes. Clarke would normally find the awkwardness endearing but her attention is keyed into Lexa’s earlier comment that’s only now catching up.

Before the next thought can form, with inhuman speed, Lexa is in front of her in less than a hundredth of a second, stopping a breath short of Clarke. The surprising closeness causes heat to rise up her chest and neck.

“What do you mean?” Lexa asks.

Clarke clears her throat hoping to clear the flush of her skin at their new proximity.

“How do you know I don’t come on Wednesdays?”

Pink blooms on Lexa’s cheeks in turn, a curious shyness befalling her expression.

“I wanted to make sure you were safe,” Lexa admits quietly. They lock gaze as she lets the implications sink in for Clarke.

It’s not a stretch to grasp what Lexa means, how she could remotely be aware of Clarke’s schedule, which had consisted of a nightly rotation for the past several weeks when she’d return home well into the early hours. If she lets herself entertain the possibility, Clarke knows that Lexa might not have really stayed away. She’s awoken on the couch to find a window open, the curtains lightly flapping in the breeze, and the weight of an extra blanket on her that she doesn’t remember grabbing. The ghost of a kiss still lingers on her cheek that maybe, now thinking back, wasn’t a product of her fitful sleep and clouded dreams. But Clarke can’t go there because Lexa’s actions and words are too conflicting. The messages too mixed and hurtful.

Like the one Lexa is pressing upon her now, as she steps in closer and puts one hand on Clarke’s waist and the other behind her neck, the charge electric despite the tentative touches.

“I _need_ you to be safe,” Lexa repeats, emphasising an unknown urgency, imploring for Clarke to understand.

She doesn’t. She’s having a really difficult time connecting Lexa’s hero complex to their cold bed or what her safety has to do with the set of documents that lay scattered on their breakfast table, unmoved since Lexa had blindsided her with them. Clarke refuses to acknowledge their existence until she receives a proper explanation.

“I can take care of myself. I don’t need you to save me.”

The grip on her waist tightens in unspoken counterargument, Lexa’s gaze a breath-stealing well of affection and vulnerability.

“I can’t lose you, not entirely.”

It makes no sense to Clarke how a partial loss can be any sort of compromise or consolation. But her confusion is given no time to take hold when Lexa unexpectedly closes the gap between them.

It’s not a fair fight that Clarke can easily lose her breath while Lexa can hold hers thousands of metres deep in the ocean for hours on end. She finds herself nonetheless plunging to the same depths when desperate lips meet hers, swept up by a kiss that shouldn’t wreck her this much given the current friction of their relationship. But it does, and for a bliss-filled moment, they lose themselves to each other, to the familiar micro negotiations of hard and soft and the rise and fall of sighs and moans. Lexa’s flight paths have never been predictable. Her kisses are even less so, and Clarke is reckless to chase after the heights she sets for them. Their feet lift from the ground without notice, and it’s only when hers reconnect again with a graceless thud does Clarke remember how utterly absorbing and viscerally distracting the taste of Lexa’s want can be.

“Sorry,” Lexa apologises for the third time when they pull back, though this one is decidedly less sincere than the others. “I didn’t mean … it’s just, I’ve missed this. Us.”

There’s a hopeful look as if waiting for Clarke to ask for more, to take things further—a soft petitioning for a reason to stay.

For all the ways that she’s missed them, and for all the ways she’s just been dismantled, Clarke wants to give in, to let one kiss be their pleasant undoing, one last heaving, consuming time. But as much as this feels like heaven in hiding, she doesn’t want to be that girl, the one who falters in conviction because of pretty eyes and pouty lips. So, against the fervid protestations of her heart’s still wild tattooing, Clarke doesn’t say anything. If Lexa isn’t willing to, then why should she.

Her stubborn silence gives finality to whatever Lexa might have hoped. After an indefinite stretch, Lexa’s shoulders slump.

They’re back to square one.

“Why?” Clarke rounds on the question again.

“Why what?”

“Don’t do that,” Clarke lowly warns, exhaling deep breaths to tamper her reaction. “You know what I’m asking. It’s really not that complicated.” Lexa bites her bottom lip, a nervous habit for when she’s about to say something Clarke doesn’t like. Somehow that sets Clarke off again, losing the last shred of her patience. With a steely gaze, she dares Lexa, “Go on, lie to me then.”

When Lexa’s lips stay sealed, after opening up to such devastating affect only seconds ago, Clarke’s anger bubbles. She pushes against Lexa’s chest, causing her to stumble backwards. It shouldn’t be this easy to move a mountain, to budge someone who can lift cars with one hand while holding back a collapsing building with the other. But when it comes to Clarke, Lexa has always had a weakness in her armour. Like crushed steel in the forge of her wife’s fire, she bends. Clarke backs her up all the way until the parapet of the rooftop hits the back of her thighs, their momentum stopping simply because there is no more room to go but down.

“Why is there a stack of paper with your signatures in our kitchen? What irreconcilable differences?!” Clarke practically roars.

Lexa flinches. Clarke’s words slap as violently as if the palm of her hand had made direct contact.

“It’s not fair to ask for a divorce and still kiss me like that. You can’t have it both ways,” Clarke continues when Lexa remains stunned. “There’s no downgrade option in a marriage back to best friend status just because of what, a misplaced sense of chivalry for my safety?”

More silence. Amidst all the clamour of the city around them, the din of traffic and the rising murmur of indistinct noises from every direction, Lexa’s muteness is deafening. And infuriating.

There’s something Lexa is keeping from her.

“I’m not signing anything until you tell me why.” Clarke’s firmness brokers no argument from Lexa but it also counterproductively discourages her from speaking up. “I want an answer, goddamnit, Lex.”

It doesn’t come. Despite the ache and tremor and fury behind her plea, the impasse is insurmountable. They’ve made no further progress than a month ago.

She came up here for some much needed air but the sky suddenly feels empty of it. Clarke’s returned anger for the situation Lexa has cornered them into seems to be the only thing keeping the moon hanging on this cloudless night. Lexa stands looking smaller and less than expected of someone with superhuman strength. Her bulletproof shield punctured, love hemorrhaging. It’s too much for Clarke to take in. So she walks away, lump in her throat.

But not a second later, a pang of guilt and the pain of leaving things unfinished has her chancing a glimpse behind. Clarke’s stomach drops.

Lexa is already gone.

In her wake, Clarke spots something on the roof paver dropped in her hurry to leave, an unidentifiable glint shimmering in the distance. When she goes to check it out, she’s pained by what she sees.

There on the ground is a black and white polaroid of her, taken at the hospital gala three years ago, that’s long been repurposed as Lexa’s tattered but beloved bookmark. Clarke is smiling and bright-eyed in the photo, snapped while caught off guard by the hippopotamus joke Lexa was telling her after one of the other surgeons had bored them with his hippocampus procedure. Her eyes moisten at the memory as she pockets it for safekeeping.

The tears well over, however, when she finds Lexa’s wedding band a few steps away, the shine of polished tungsten distinct from her own white gold. Her wife has this habit of playing with her ring whenever she reads. Many times Clarke has found it lying between the leaves of Lexa’s favourite books. When scolded for her carelessness, Lexa would assure her that Plath and Woolf and Atwood were fantastic babysitters, their vows safeguarded in prose and verse—the very same ones exchanged on this rooftop.

It’s all Clarke can do not to fall apart reading the one word inscription on the inside of the ring, its custom spelling.

 _Lov(e)_.

Because, Lexa had once told her; love, like Clarke, is spelled with an ‘e’.

 

—


	2. Parts III & IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #angstvolumeup

*****

**— PART III —**

 

  
  
“No, no, no.”  
  
There is a pile of red in the distance.

As soon as she steps foot onto the rooftop, Clarke sees the unmoving lump. A collapsed mountain—a ruin of velvet and crumpled folds of a crimson that would otherwise be gorgeous against the bleak greyness of a rain-soaked city, were it not for the eerie stillness.

All thoughts of a smoke break forgotten, her lungs fill instead with dread. Her heart is instantly in her throat, pulse pounding as much as her feet do carrying her to the scene.  
  
Superheroes are supposed to be invincible. At least hers. Not this shapeless form, more liquid than solid.  
  
“Lexa!”  
  
Lexa had taken her ultimatum to heart and stayed away. Not once has she come since their last standoff. This isn't how Clarke imagined seeing her again.

Quickening her pace, Clarke draws the distance between them closer in determined strides, steps only faltering on nearing the pool of black blood. So much blood. She stifles her gasp. There is no time for spousal panic to set in; no time to lose her composure when the viscose-like run of spilt India ink comes into clearer view. The doctor in her swiftly takes over. Clarke is on her hands and knees a breathless second later, careless of how her elbows slip and scrape against the wet concrete pavers as she lowers herself to check Lexa’s vitals.

Eyes scan urgently but expertly for signs and symptoms over the slacken frame. She finds Lexa’s pupils dilated and unresponsive behind closed lids. Then, after pressing an ear to unusually cold lips produces barely conclusive results of low and laboured breathing, too dangerously shallow, she moves to an equally alarming, stock-still chest, palm at the ready at the base of Lexa’s sternum. Two fingers blindly seek out the inside of a limp wrist. Her trauma surgeon’s instincts push past the downpour and the deafening volume of her heart’s frantic beating to count aloud, working overtime against the cacophony of ambient noise.

Clarke focuses on nothing else but detecting the slightest pressure change under her fore and index fingers.

One one-hundredth ...  
two one-hundredth ...  
three then four.

The seconds tick by in agonising gaps of length before she feels it. Though it’s slow, acute relief washes over her to find a pulse.

“Lexa, baby, hold on.”  
  
Her next worry is the distressing dark stain covering a good portion of Lexa’s midsection. But there is so much fabric, an incredible density of woven threads that the weight of Lexa’s cape frustrates Clarke’s efforts to reach the source of bleeding. Lexa moves so effortlessly and elegantly with her sash that its heaviness always surprises her, more concrete than cloth.

After some clumsy, fruitless attempts, Clarke manages to gain a closer look. She has to suck in a startled breath, however, when a deep gash is revealed across Lexa’s abdomen. The normally indestructible material of the suit appear as tattered and frayed as her nerves at the site of injury.

When applying pressure to the wound does little more than blacken her palms, she is desperate for another way to close it and stop the extreme loss of blood. Clarke fumbles for the lighter in her pocket, and ignores the sharp pang of guilt for her original intent on their rooftop to reignite a kicked habit, which would undoubtedly disappoint Lexa were she conscious to witness it.

The stress of the last three months, and especially few weeks, have taken their toll. Her bed is empty of its familiar warmth, her breaths less sure as the days pass. Her operating table has been busier than usual with the recent spike in ER admittances. Today felt like the edge of Clarke’s limit, a cigarette the smallest barrier against toppling over it. But fate works in funny, mysterious ways, the urge to indulge momentarily in a harmful soother now supplies Clarke with a provisional tool to attend to Lexa.

Rusty from disuse, and with the rain being unhelpful, it takes several tries. The sparkwheel strains under the weight of her urgency but finally concedes to her thumb’s insistence. Driven by coursing adrenaline, without further thought, she moves the flame in a hovering motion along the length of the massive cut. The cauterising would be more effective with a hot metal instrument in a sterile environment but given the scarcity of both at the moment, Clarke makes do, continuing in short, one- to two-second bursts of the flame.

Performing laser field surgery falls well outside of her domestic expertise of lighting barbecues and campfires. For once, she wishes to have her own superpower, the pyrokinetic skills to generate more heat than the current slow blue burning. Patience is not her forte but at present she is helpless to the efficacy of lighter fluid. Thoughts of a half-empty chamber are pushed aside, a bridge to cross later.

Were this not a harrowing experience, Clarke would laugh at the irony of the role fire has literally played in forging their relationship.

The first time, they were kids. Lexa had accidentally lit the ends of her beautiful, brown curls while playing with candles that they were firmly instructed by Uncle Gustus not to. Panicked (and horrified) at the prospect of a bald best friend, Clarke had raced her towards the backyard pool and plunged their small bodies together into the deep end. In the rush to ‘save’ Lexa’s hair, she had forgotten about being a weak swimmer, her novice act of heroism quickly turning into a near-drowning, which then unexpectedly became a first kiss. Damp and cold and somehow on her back on the grass when she regained her bearings, Clarke lost them again finding Lexa’s mouth on hers, performing a confused version of CPR that involved a shy tongue.

She was too young then—and overly preoccupied with containing her blush—to think about the considerable strength it must have taken for a nine year old to carry an eight year old out from the water to many feet away from the pool.

The second time, years later after the kissing had long since become intentional rather than accidental, a different danger had Lexa’s carefully separated worlds colliding. Clarke was trapped in the docklands. What started out as a routine volunteer stint to give free medical aid to a group of undocumented workers hiding out in the empty warehouses, ended up becoming a frenetic rescue mission when a dozen nearby shipping containers exploded, flaring up in a sudden mushroom cloud of smoke and ash. Lexa’s alter ego had arrived just as the blaze was threatening to engulf all of Pier Seven—her own ball of fire scorching across the night sky. Clarke gaped in awe while protectively crowding over two small children, watching the black-suited figure work at superhuman speed to douse the inferno with the river’s water then salvage through the rubble with back-bending determination.

It would take another year before she would learn of the caped heroine and her then-girlfriend’s shared identity, the connection between the set of green eyes that locked with hers for a brief moment as she took the pair of siblings from Clarke’s arms towards safety, and the same colour that fretted over her excessive coughing later that evening after waking up disoriented in a hospital bed. She should have read the tenderness in both gazes as exclusively belonging to Lexa, an unrivalled softness behind luminous flecks of gold. But the discovery wasn’t made about Lexa’s double life until a slip-up about the docklands during an argument over the rising dangers of Clarke’s philanthropic activities, which were taking her deeper into the seedier parts of the city.

“What if next time, you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I can’t be there,” Lexa had made the case in a pained plea for Clarke to scale back her volunteer hours. “I almost lost you once.” The words hadn’t computed until Clarke later found her father’s watch—a loss she’d resigned to somewhere under melted steel—in Lexa’s photography studio. Her random disappearances and odd-hour field assignments finally made sense.

Consequently, they had almost lost each other following the revelation of Lexa’s identity, the stretch of years she kept her secret from Clarke transforming into an emotional distance they struggled to navigate around. Part of Clarke’s anger over their latest communication breakdown stems from a repeat of that breach of trust and Lexa’s infuriating inclination to make unconsulted decisions on their behalf.

Yet, all of that seems trite and insignificant if Lexa isn’t even alive to fuel Clarke’s rage.

The idea of losing Lexa now causes a palpable tightness in Clarke’s chest and takes her mind back to the fire at hand. She redoubles her efforts. Luckily, the sky opens up favourably then, the rain stopping momentarily for her work to take effect.

Her superhero finally comes to life when Clarke’s hand slips, singeing a band of flesh. She recoils at the hissing of charred skin but the sound of spluttered coughing has never been more comforting, as is the reprieve of hearing her name again so uniquely reduced to a crunch of consonants in a soft lilt.  
  
“Clarke?”  
  
“Shhh, you’re okay,” Clarke reassures quietly, though plainly more for her sake than Lexa’s. She repockets the lighter and proof of her unconventional medical care.

“Mhm ... sorry,” Lexa groans, rolling gently to her side, eyes staying closed while taking concentrated breaths. Clarke intercepts the hand that tries to press on the sensitive area. “I couldn’t stay away,” Lexa tells her, somewhat dramatically, through strained draws of air, “I might never get another chance to say this. Clarke, I lo—”  
  
“No,” Clarke snaps, her tone short, in contrast to the unseen soft gaze and the gentleness with which she prods around the tender skin to determine the extent of aftercare required. “You’re not dying so don’t even start. I need you alive, I’m not done being mad at you.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
From what Clarke can tell, she was able to minimise the severity of the laceration, the rest something Lexa can easily heal on her own after thorough cleaning to stave off infection. Contrary to the general public’s perception, Lexa’s skin isn’t impenetrable—evidenced by the countless times that she’s clumsily knicked herself in the kitchen while trying to surprise Clarke with cooking—but it does regenerate at such an accelerated rate it might as well be.

“I’m gonna grab my bag,” Clarke informs her and then turns back on her heels to instruct sternly, “don’t fly anywhere.”

The imminent threat abated, she’s reassured enough to leave Lexa momentarily unattended but nonetheless worries her lip until Lexa grunts her acknowledgment followed by a mumbling of, “Wasn’t planning to.”  
  
Lexa is asleep and lightly snoring by the time Clarke returns from their apartment downstairs with a medkit of supplies. Fearing for internal injuries or the possibility of a concussion, Clarke unkindly jabs her awake. “Hey, Lex. Stay with me.”

Only just noticing the deep circles under Lexa’s eyes when she goes to rub them, Clarke almost feels bad for disturbing her fleeting rest. She altogether ignores the small voice that reminds her of the role stress plays in exacerbating her wife’s insomniac, nocturnal ways, not keen to consider her contribution to the pattern.

“What happened?”

It takes some pained puffs before Lexa admits with a small degree of embarrassment. “Chasing reapers, one came out of nowhere.”  
  
Clarke pauses her search for the rubbing alcohol solution, concerned that anyone was able to best her by surprise.  
  
“That’s not like you. Your hearing okay?”  
  
“Yeah, pretty good,” Lexa drawls, the lightness of her tone a silent comfort for Clarke that nothing more serious is at play. Lexa’s lips tilt in a lopsided smile as she says, “your heartbeat ...”  
  
Clarke blushes at the implication Lexa leaves trailing about its speed, silently cursing her human limitations.

The imbalance of their relationship is such that where Clarke needs use of her stethoscope, Lexa is naturally attentive to the internal sounds of her body. Every breath taken, each contraction and expansion of lungs, every single pulsation of her heart. Perpetually in a heightened state in Lexa’s presence, she’s never been able to regulate their functions at will to save face.

“So, how’d a measly reaper beat you?” She deflects, ignoring the teasing to keep Lexa talking and alert while she cleans the wound. If her dabbing is a little more forceful than necessary, Lexa doesn’t complain.

The worst of it over, Clarke relaxes into her task. Lexa’s body is already doing the heavy lifting of mending itself anyways. Within minutes there will only be a faint hint of a scar.

Lexa finally opens her eyes then. Clarke is not prepared. Against the black of kohl shadowed underneath long lashes and running down her cheeks, the green is an arresting viridian that knocks the air right out of Clarke’s lungs.

“I was distracted,” Lexa quietly admits, and then sheepishly discloses, “I thought I spotted a head of blonde.”  
  
“You wouldn’t be a very effective superhero if you stopped for every blonde.”  
  
“Not everyone,” Lexa clarifies. A pause. A soft pink colours her cheeks. “I listened for you.”  
  
Clarke sighs. She stops mid-swipe, her pulse upticking in betrayal.

Since Lexa isn’t playing fairly, Clarke’s only recourse is to do the same. Sometimes the best defence is a really good offence.

“Is that when you lost your ring?”

The _innocent_ left-field question immediately stops Lexa’s movement just as she’s raising her hand in a gesture to cup Clarke’s face. The retraction is comical for how uselessly and poorly Lexa tries to conceal the glaringly empty third finger made more pronounced by the tan line there.

Clarke bites her lip to keep the smile threatening to break from an upper hand knowledge of the band sitting in her bedside drawer, safely stowed away.

Lexa’s eyes widen in panic before the telltale bite to _her_ bottom lip arrives. Clarke is amused to see how her wife will get out of this one.  
  
“Uh no ... had to get it clean,” Lexa stammers out, hesitant like she’s asking Clarke rather than informing her. When Clarke merely raises an unhelpful eyebrow, “It’s, yeah, with the cleaners,” Lexa says with mounting false confidence as her fiction gains steam. The white lie would be more effective if she had stopped there instead of rambling on, “I like to keep it really shiny. At all times. So when I noticed a smudge, a big one, I immediately called up Harry the jeweller. He’s rated five stars on Yelp. Specialises in special metals.”

Clarke decides to be merciful and gives Lexa an out after finishing her own cleaning of the wound. “Sit up, please,” she asks and Lexa looks relieved for something to do other than run her mouth.

Injured, Lexa’s movements are slow. Clarke helps to shoulder her weight and carefully shift her into position, sat with knees drawn up and opened just wide enough for Clarke to fit between. It’s more intimate than recent awkwardness would have Clarke preferring not to be in such close proximity where the colour of a dew-laden forest is too striking and distracting.

“Hi.”

Lexa’s soft greeting does nothing to improve Clarke’s focus until a gentle throat clearing prompts her into action, the reason for their closeness. Given Lexa’s alertness, a head injury doesn’t seem likely but she wants to be thorough with a few routine checks.

She retrieves a penlight to measure Lexa’s pupil responsiveness. After the exam completes as expected without cause for further worry, the Q&A test for impaired cognition goes just as well, even if the answers leave Clarke wanting.

“Name?”

“Lexa Griffin-Wo…  um, Woods.” Lexa stumbles. Clarke ignores.

“Other name?”

“The Commander.”

“Who’s the president?”

“Obama.”

“Which one?”

“Malia.”

“Good,” Clarke nods, satisfied with both the state of the free world and Lexa’s intact memory. Testing linguistic skills next, she asks, “What’s the tall animal with a long neck called?”

“Giraffe.”

“Name of your favourite fruit, that grows in bunches?”

“Banana.”

“The colour of my hair?”

“When?” Lexa asks, a contemplative look as she considers her answer, “In morning light or late at night? Before or after spring?”

“Just in general.”

“Exquisite.” An unimpressed  thinning of lips draws light laughter, followed by the correct (prosaic) attribute, “Yellow. Just like my favourite fruit that grows in bunches.”

Clarke resists another smile, not wanting to encourage Lexa’s use of charm as diversion. She pushes on, despite the urge to kiss that smirk off.

“What’s the word for the thing the earth revolves around?”

“Clarke.” At Clarke’s glower, which burns a thousand times hotter than the real thing, Lexa amends, “Sun.”

Lexa looks at her then, like her whole world does spin around Clarke’s existence.

“Spell truck.”

“T-r-u-c-k.”

“Now, flower.”

“F-l-o-w-e-r.”

“Great,” Clarke says, ready to move on but apparently Lexa is not.

“Ask me to spell home.”

Clarke sighs, anticipating where this is headed but humouring her all the same. “Spell home.”

“Y-o-u.”

“You can’t say things like that, Lexa.”

The point doesn’t stick. Lexa’s next words steal the remaining air from her.

“I want to come home.”

The shift in tone replaces the levity of seconds ago. Lexa turns her head after the quiet words, a faraway look overtaking her expression that Clarke doesn’t know what to make of. Longing mixed with an unnamed inner conflict.

“So, you’re ready to talk about it?” Clarke ventures cautiously. Not yet allowing herself to hope.

It’s a long, fraught deliberation—the overhanging clouds reflected in warring eyes—before the self-defeating but unsurprising head shake comes. Lexa stays obstinately mum about their forced separation, a hard swallow punctuating her continued silence on the matter.

What she does voice is of little consolation for either of them.

“I miss you,” Lexa says at the edge of ache and affection. Like that’s all that matters. Her hand goes to Clarke’s waist, a small squeeze—the needed touch her personalised form of medical care.

 _I miss you too_ , Clarke doesn’t say. Doesn’t know if it’s reason enough to re-open the door.

Treading water is all she knows to do as of late; whereas letting Lexa back into their home in any capacity but the fullness of their vows, without consummation, amounts to a sort of submersion that this Lexa isn’t equipped to save this Clarke. Regardless of how much they miss each other.

The impasse hangs between them, tension taut with unsaid things. Lexa finds interest in the tear of her suit. She fixes her gaze on the compromised fibres. “I know I have no right to ask, but can I … can I stay here for the night at least?”

“Lexa.”

Clarke’s breath catches at Lexa’s insistence to keep her unbalanced tonight.

“Just one night ...” Lexa continues. “I’d like to be near you, if that’s okay.”

Another sigh. Deeper and longer.

None of this is okay. Or fair. Lexa can’t have her cake and eat it too. She’s the one who asked for a divorce, who put Clarke in this position of somehow being the villain keeping her from their home.

“And the sleeping arrangement?”

“Best friends share beds.”

The scoff is barely held back.

“That’s not how it works.”

“I can take the couch.”

Clarke takes her turn to deliberate.

She visualises Lexa in their space again, her lanky form curled on the sofa while Clarke lies in their bedroom. Neither of them would likely get any rest, listening in on each other’s movements and fighting instincts to erase the gap. It wouldn’t take much for Clarke to end up on the couch as well, pushed back against Lexa who would wordlessly make room for her. They’d fall asleep entwined.

One night spent within Lexa’s protective hold, parking hurt and anger and emptiness for pickup tomorrow. It’s a tempting choice. A sweet surrender to lessen this evening’s trauma and let emotional wounds heal.

Lexa unconsciously does her part with jutted bottom lip and glistened eyes to swing the vote in her favour. Clarke is ultimately defenseless against such displays. The thumb that brushes against her side is what finally leads to a decision. She needs such grounding too.

“No, Lexa,” Clarke denies the initial request. “You’re right,” she confirms. “You have no right.”

The devastated look she receives is too much. Like linens rung out to dry, sadness pours out of Lexa’s skin. Her body visibly slumps, as if damaged worse than the ordeal she has just endured.

“But,” Clarke hastens to put forth before Lexa can descend into despair, “how about a compromise? Not tonight but every night.”

Just as quickly as Lexa’s head had dropped, it jerks back up. Confused and incredulous and hopeful.

“Is this a trick question part of the test?”  
  
“No, you passed with flying colours,” Clarke reports.

“So …”

“So, no to an overnight in the apartment but I am willing to re-institute your rooftop privileges,” she offers and Lexa’s eyes light up. “Two weeks. Every night. I need to make sure this heals properly.”

They both know it’s a ruse—Lexa is practically one hundred percent recovered by now, the cut looking like nothing more than a scratch of pencil—but nonetheless buy into the pretense. Lexa eagerly nods her agreement.

“On one condition though. I want something in exchange.” Clarke quickly tacks on, causing Lexa’s forming smile to falter. “You have to start being more honest with me.”  
  
Lexa’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “Like?”  
  
“Like when you’re hurt, how badly you’re hurt, who’s hurting you.” Clarke pokes a finger at her chest with each word, contradictorily inflicting pain.

Lexa grumbles into her cape, head turned aside to burrow in her shoulder.  
  
“What was that?”  
  
“Yes, Clarke.”  
  
She helps Lexa to her feet then. Both of Clarke’s arms immediately wrap around her waist when Lexa stumbles. But on earning a bashful smile in thanks, accompanied by a soft, crinkling green, it’s Clarke who stands unsteady.

Just as Clarke is about to raise a flag on Lexa’s instability, Lexa curiously steps out of her hold.

The tenor shifts again. Levity returns as she scrunches her eyes determinedly and shoots an uncooperative fist in the air. When nothing happens, she tries again, brows furrowed tighter, missing Clarke’s gawking at her eccentric behaviour.

“What’re you doing?”

“Ugh, I’m broken.” Lexa hangs her head after a third failed air punch and drops her outstretched arm in defeat by her side. Fighting a smile, Clarke lifts the bowed chin seeking an explanation of the dramatics. Lexa sulks, “No fly.”

Finding her temporary grounding amusing, Clarke tilts her head in faux sympathy.

“Welcome to the human race.”

 

  
*****

**— PART IV —**

 

  
Things incrementally improve thereafter.  
  
Stilted and hesitant at first about how to proceed with the new dynamic, but eventually, they get into a rhythm over the following nights. Clarke brings Lexa a sandwich and a banana in exchange for a story of her day. By the time the bribed meal graduates to elaborate midnight picnics, conversation flows as light as the fluttering of butterflies in Clarke’s stomach and the gentle autumn wind that carries their voices across the rooftop.

The sitting distance between them shortens by inches each evening until the sofa resumes its previous post as their hangout headquarter after work, bottoms imprinting deeper into the cushions.

Two weeks turn into three, then four then eight. Movie nights are picked up again. Clarke holds back her laughter at Lexa’s nose-upturning at the _‘wild inaccuracies, Clarke’_ of comic-book films. In turn, Lexa brushes off Clarke’s pedantic critique of medical dramas.

They negotiate a weird space. More than friends but not exactly lovers, interactions bracketed by the familiarity of spouses knowledgeable in quirks and ticks and inclinations. It’s like reverse dating. Domesticity wrought with unsubtle, stolen glances to lips. Like falling for her wife again while hands are tied behind her back so as not to act on the smallest of impulses.

Restraint is especially difficult on this particular star-filled night. Wearing cigarette pants and a white stripe t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, hair tied up in a bun and eyes a brilliant shine under stringed lights, Lexa looks so casually beautiful that Clarke has to constantly check herself from instinctually leaning forward to capture rose, plump lips.

This close, it’s also impossible not to take in the floral and creamy scent of elderflower and the subtler vanilla notes of sweetgrass underneath. It hints at perhaps a recent trip to the northern mountains of Canada, where Lexa once flew her on a date.

With the murmuring sting of her heart and the persistent loneliness of life off this rooftop, Clarke wants to allow herself one moment of weakness. She imagines nosing into Lexa’s neck to bottle in the smell of their fifth anniversary, Lexa gasping at first but then letting her work up from a barely-there ghosting of skin into a slow and long and warm kiss, deepening as they angle to fit. Clarke would soak it— _her_ —up and store it for the long nights without Lexa, a balm for the _more_ that they inexplicably, frustratingly can not have.  
  
When mouths finally part, Clarke would open her eyes and find—

Lexa is staring at her, breaking Clarke from the too-real daydream. A soft look, something bordering on a shared yearning as though she had been partaking in the same imaginary.

“It’s going really fast,” Lexa whispers.

Clarke asks, “What is?”

The tops of Lexa’s ears twitch and redden, a clue.

Instead of verbally answering, she places her hand over Clarke’s heart.

From Lexa, love manifests not only as declarations and through acts large and small but also quietly, expressly, in a constant vigilance—remaining ever alert—to the shifting of Clarke’s beats, the major changes as well as the minor rearrangements.

“How fast?”

“Thunderous.”

Clarke’s cheeks flush a violent red.

Yielding, she covers Lexa’s hand, softly brushing the back of it. Temporary acquiescence to settle her heart’s frantic beating. They hold each other’s gaze for a drawn out moment before Clarke reluctantly returns it to Lexa’s lap, and painfully lets go.

For all the progress they’ve made, the reality is sobering. There’s a pretty girl next to her who she’s been in love with forever, but Lexa’s denial of the forever part remains an intractable problem.

A loud crashing sound from the laptop saves Clarke from continuing too far down that path of thinking. Thor has done something with his hammer though she’s stopped paying attention ages ago to understand the plot point.

“Speaking of,” Clarke diverts, grateful for an excuse to return to a more manageable tempest, “what’s the thunder god been up to? Catch me up.”

And so Lexa does. But by the time the movie reaches its thrilling, action-packed climax, Lexa’s head has fallen on Clarke’s shoulder.

In seconds, her breathing evens out.

Clarke exhales and closes her eyes.

She dreams of elderflower.

—

“Are you eating enough?”

Lexa feels a little slimmer than usual. They had somehow ended up in a tickle fight debating the culinary merits of pineapple, after Clarke had maligned her poor taste in pizza toppings and questionable choice of craft beer that tastes like the backwaters of the Hudson. Fingers soon found her weak spots when Lexa had no counter argument for Clarke’s judgment of her takeout decision-making skills.

But with Lexa presently on top of her, Clarke needed a distraction from the travelling hands.

The abdominal muscles under Clarke’s fingers flex at the questioning of her physical wellness as if offended on Lexa’s behalf that she’s anything but still insanely fit. Regardless, Clarke dotes, “Do I need to talk to Anya?”

Given Lexa’s extremely high metabolism, the volume of food she consumes would surprise anyone charged with her diet. Though her excessive eating habits is not new to her sister, it’s been years since the adopted siblings lived under the same roof. Anya is likely experiencing renewed sticker shock at her recent grocery bills.

“Please don’t. She’s already unhappy about having a houseguest.”  
  
“What, your sister’s not thrilled about her place smelling like a kale farm, is she?”

Clarke lifts her chin in challenge and waits for the rebuttal, the oft-repeated speech about the leafy green plant’s health benefits and why it’s a _super_ food.

Instead, Lexa leans down, lips coming near Clarke’s ear, and whispers.

“It kales me that you think you’re so funny. You’re kale’in me softly, Clarke.”

Lexa pulls back laughing when Clarke groans loudly.

—

It’s a hard habit to break, worrying about Lexa and her overall well-being.

Three nights in a row Lexa had come without her usual attire.

“Where’s your cape?”  
  
“In the wash.”  
  
“Where’s your other cape?”  
  
“Also in the wash.”  
  
“How many times have I told you that you need to pre-plan these things, Lex?”  
  
Lexa bites her shoulder, and says around a yawn,  “Apparently not enough.”

—

The weeks roll by and Clarke is lulled into the comforting space of Lexa’s nearness, the ease of their ‘friendship’ even when the future remains hazy.

Things reach a form of normalcy and Clarke thinks she might be ready to revisit the terms of their brokered relationship.

But just as she feels the fault lines stabilising, the ground shifts beneath her once more.

—

“You look nice.”  
  
Clarke takes off her heels in lieu of an answer, needing the extra breaths to gather herself and not immediately yell like she wanted to on seeing Lexa leaning against the wall. Reappearing unannounced after an unexplained absence.

“Did you have a good time?” Lexa asks quietly. Her frame is at an angle, a shoulder pressed hard into the brick as if it’s the only thing keeping her standing. She’s playing with something in her hands that Clarke can’t make out yet from this far.  
  
Clarke shrugs but remains wilfully quiet, despite her rampant curiosity over Lexa’s recent whereabouts. Admittedly, she had a terrible time, only able to keep the vigilante off her mind long enough to order her meal that she barely ended up touching. It had been days since she heard from Lexa. Four bananas sit browning on her kitchen counter.  
  
“I hear the gnocchi is great.” Lexa points to the doggy bag in Clarke’s hand. “It must be, for you to go twice in the same week.”  
  
That snaps Clarke out of her stewing, silent treatment. She feels a surge of anger, “Were you spying on me tonight?”  
  
“No,” Lexa answers, her voice measured if not uncharacteristically small. “I was picking Aden up on Wednesday from his karate class. You were leaving the restaurant.”

It takes a second before it clicks that the neighbourhood Clarke was in—half an hour ago as well as three nights prior—is a frequent haunt for the Nightbloods training. Her stomach drops at what Lexa might have seen. Karma hasn’t been on her side lately so the probability is high that Lexa caught her and another surgeon kissing goodbye.

She had been taken off guard by the boldness of the hospital’s newest hire, who had misread the standard welcoming dinner as a date. In her distracted excitement over what movie she and Lexa would watch that evening, Clarke had neglected to inform him of the entirely platonic motivation of the chief’s daughter acting as a stand-in for the senior Dr. Griffin. Too shocked by the unsolicited physical contact to properly react, the kiss went on longer than it should have before Clarke promptly pushed him off once realisation dawned. He had apologised immediately and, keen to correct his error, offered to treat her to a second, _friendly_ dinner at the same restaurant.

Clarke had hastily agreed to a repeat outing so she could get back to the rooftop, only to be stood up and spend the unmet hours questioning the stars. The constellations and their quiet empathy would keep her company again when Lexa failed to show a second and third time. By this evening Clarke was at a loss. Hewn and hollowed out.

Lexa steps out from the shadows and Clarke gasps at what she recognises as the now-visible item Lexa’s been turning over. “You forgot your scarf that night.”

Their fingers graze as Clarke is handed the blue silk, a well-worn birthday gift from Lexa.  
  
“Lexa, it’s not what you think—”

“It’s ok,” Lexa reassures, though the sadness in her eyes is unmissable, “I know it was a misunderstanding. I saw what happened.”

“Is that why you stayed away?”

Lexa shakes her head. Clarke doesn’t think she’ll get more honest than that but then Lexa surprises her, “I got hurt.”

It’s only now that Clarke notices the slight limp and the misalignment of her shoulders. The wall leaning gains new meaning. But it doesn’t add up to give Clarke any clearer picture of what’s been happening.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t Anya?”

“I didn’t want to worry you. I just needed time. I’m ok.”

Clarke stares incredulous at being asked not to worry over yet another baffling injury. Jaw tightening, it takes sisyphean effort for worry not to turn into fury. None of this—the disintegration of their marriage, Lexa’s sporadic absences even before things went downhill, her increasing physical vulnerability—has been okay.

Before she can launch into an assailing, Lexa tells her, “You know, if you wanted to, I’d understand.”  
  
Something in her self-sacrificing stoicism breaks Clarke’s brittle composure at trying to keep her shit together.  
  
“You understand?” Clarke asks pointedly, her anger boiling over, because wrath is easier to handle than fear. “ _What_ do you understand Lexa? Please tell me because I don’t!”  
  
Lexa looks scared for a moment by her outburst but then calmly elaborates, “I would understand if you wanted to move on.”

Clarke wants to round on her for her misplaced martyrdom. But she instead deflates, all at once incredibly exhausted with waning energy to fight a losing battle.

“Of course I want to move on,” she concedes, resigned. “Don’t you think I want to be doing anything but spending my nights crying over someone who doesn’t or won’t or can’t love me. Who _chooses_ not to.”

The heels of her palms rub into bleary eyes, which have seen too little sleep and too many tears.

“Clarke, I’ve been in love with you since I learned how to fly.”

The admission throws her off.

“You were four.”

It wouldn’t be until many years later that Clarke would grasp why Lexa had always won their hide-and-seek games, or how her presumed to-be-lost kitten could reappear on her doorstep the next day, squirming and meowing in Lexa’s scrawny arms. Red-eyed and grateful, little Clarke had planted a kiss on her neighbour’s parted lips, thanking the fellow kindergartner for her presumed superior tree-climbing skills.

“We were best friends, then you became my college girlfriend then my wife.”

Clarke doesn’t follow Lexa’s logic of bringing up their personal history, the journey from childhood friends to lovers, and at present, to enemies.

“So, what changed?”

“It was never a choice.”

The more Lexa answers, the more she confuses Clarke.

“Where are you going with this?”

“Love isn’t the problem. I’ve only ever wanted to keep you safe and happy. If someone else can make you happy then—”  
  
“I don’t want someone else,” Clarke stresses, tired of the circles they’ve been going. “Do you really think I want to kiss strangers and pretend they’re you?”  
  
By the minute hinge of Lexa’s jaw at the directness of Clarke’s words, it’s clear Lexa is as near to crumbling as Clarke is to breaking down.  
  
“I don’t want you getting hurt,” Lexa whispers by way of another obscure explanation, holding steadfast to her reasoning.  
  
Clarke looks on in disbelief.

The fight leaves her.

“Are you listening now?”  
  
“What?” Lexa asks, brows drawn together by the swerve in conversation.  
  
“Can you hear my heart breaking at how much you’ve already hurt me?”  
  
Lexa can shake off bullets, can withstand the weight of an entire building falling on her, can blunt the blow of daggers but Clarke’s question penetrates like a thousand cuts. Her face contorts in pain. The bleeding is invisible but the hurt profuse.  
  
She drops her gaze and then turns to leave.  
  
“Right, fly away,” Clarke mutters to herself in utter defeat. Voice cracked, she says to the ground, angry at the sky, “You’re good at that.”

She turns to pick up the pieces of what’s left of her heart.

The next thing Clarke knows, she’s being spun around, lips are on her and she’s lifted into the air and brought into a bruising kiss. Lexa’s cape enfolds her in.

As her surprise fades, Clarke’s legs instinctually wrap around Lexa’s waist while their mouths move together.

The kiss is hungry and needy and urgent. Lexa kisses with such breathtaking want, with such stunning intensity that Clarke doesn’t realise they have rocket launched towards the satellites until they return, suspended above the clouds.

“Please don’t kiss anyone else,” Lexa begs into the seal of their lips, a withdrawal of her earlier words, before remaking the case for being the only one with that privilege.

The tremble of her swollen bottom lip might as well be an underscore across Lexa’s heart left blank for Clarke to sign. For months, Clarke has been unwilling to ink her name on copy paper, holding back from attaching it to any notion of dissolution, but now, reckless abandon isn’t apt enough to describe the absolute carelessness with which she casts restraint aside to write her signature. The fine print is inconsequential to the way her body responds to Lexa’s terms of agreement.

Clarke falls into the second kiss with equal fervour, her own need reaching the same height as where their entangled bodies hang weightless in the sky. She moves Lexa’s hand—the one not keeping her from falling—under her skirt into her underwear where the awaiting wetness is instantly cupped before searching fingers brush through heated folds in fevered strokes.

“Clarke,” Lexa _whimpers_ then slides in. Clarke nearly slips from her hold but quick reflexes prevent a steep drop. Though the tight grip can’t help with the feeling that she’s already in free fall.

Her answering moan is swallowed by Lexa’s mouth and lost to the rush in her ears and the distant sounds of jet engines. Two, three fingers—it’s hard to count with the thinness of air up here—immediately seek out her front wall and then proceed to rub against it with wanton purpose.

Clarke grinds down, as much as one can when there is no ground. Yet, tens of thousands of feet in the air, there is no safer place in the world for Clarke than in Lexa’s arms. Not once has Lexa dropped her.

With no concern for the high-altitude precarity of their intimacy, Clarke gives into the thrusting, rocks against the attendant hand, as Lexa makes love to her in a conflict of hard and soft, slow and fast. The atmosphere burns with their cries, their panting, gasping search for Clarke’s release.

Lexa has taken her in so many ways. This feels different. Not just an embodied and wholly intimate experience of physics at work, but there is something visceral and haunting in Lexa’s desperation that approaches an almost sacred fealty with how thoroughly she fucks Clarke now.

The gravity of what they’re doing—the gravity of _them_ , together like this—is heavy. Lexa makes a hallowed claim to what she has not allowed herself to have all these months, makes the sound of Clarke’s name holy in the way her tongue lifts it inside the cathedral of Clarke’s mouth.

It reverberates.

By the time a thumb is circling her clit, the intensity overwhelms.

“Lexa,” she rasps.

“I’ve got you, love.”

Clarke comes with tears in her eyes and a quiet sob into Lexa’s chest.

As Clarke descends from her high, she presses her ear harder against the Kevlar material, trying to listen for a reciprocal sound of what Lexa must hear of her own heart’s wild beating.

The force of her orgasm leaves her a shuddering, heaving mess that Lexa consoles through intermittent kisses and indecipherable whisperings. Lexa stays inside of her for awhile, the connection keeping Clarke tethered.

Once her breathing regulates and her heart rate normalises again, Lexa withdraws and makes their descent for reentry into the metropolis.

Getting closer to the built skyline, the muffled sounds of the city flit up. They don’t say anything, letting quiet presses of lips serve as speech. But then flashes of light momentarily blind her before a sonic-piercing crackle breaks the air.

“Clarke, I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t quite catch Lexa’s words, which come out faint because her ears still ring from the unidentifiable but deafeningly loud clanging of metal. A beat later, belatedly, the apology registers.

There is no chance, however, to ask what for.

They are _falling_.

Plummeting to earth.

Lexa tightens her hold, both arms securing Clarke in place. It is the last safe thing Clarke feels.

She closes her eyes, bracing for impact.

But the next thing she encounters on reopening them isn’t a shattered ground. Clarke doesn’t know for how long she’s been out but confusion pervades to find herself lying on her back on their rooftop. In one piece, and nothing hurts. Not yet, anyways.

It’s a beautiful night. The stars are quietly keeping watch. The moon shines bright, tranquil and translucent.

Everything is still.

Too still.

 _Lexa_.

Clarke turns her head to the side expecting to locate her landing cushion and the superhuman reason she’s still intact. Instead, once more, she is met with dark spotting on the pavers some inches away. Dread pools in her stomach at the déjà vu. Her weary gaze follows the familiar run of ink until it disappears over the roof’s ledge.

Thoughts of pursuing the trail—and anxiety over what she’ll find at its end—are forestalled by the realisation that there’s a weight on her.

Clarke’s vision blurs when she looks down.

She is enveloped in red velvet. So well tucked in that such enfolding could only be a micro act of love. Her stomach bottoms out. The tears spill forth, but not because the present warmth she feels is inadequate to the missing heat of the garment’s absent wearer.

The cape is stained.

There are holes in the fabric.

Lexa is no longer bulletproof.

  
  
—

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hurt me. I bruise easily.
> 
> Final chapter 3 (Part V & Epilogue) to come, after the final chapter of [_Except You Love_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13602705/). Thanks for reading :)


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